by Lynne Graham
Leah felt her body stretch to accommodate his raw invasion, the sensation still new enough to shock, and then he moved inside her, creating an insatiable need that burned through her entire body. Unconsciously her fingers dug into his smooth, muscular back, her breath sobbing in her throat with every urgent thrust. Ecstatic sensation took over as he possessed her so thoroughly that she was driven out of her mind with sheer, splintering pleasure. And when release came it consumed her utterly for long, timeless moments and then dropped her down gently into sweet, drowning languor.
‘Heaven is said to come to he who waits,’ Nik murmured silkily, curving her confidently into the damp, hot heat of him. ‘But I was always a speculator...and patience is not one of my virtues.’
Exhausted, satiated, Leah couldn’t think straight, and while her mind was endeavouring to function again she slid back into sleep. When she wakened again the curtains were wide, the sun high in the sky and a breakfast tray, its contents congealing now, lay on the cabinet on her side of the bed. She looked for Nik, found him gone, and felt dismayingly alone.
It was midday but as she dived out of bed all that she could think about was the events around dawn. Her crumpled nightdress lay in a heap on the carpet like an accusing statement and a flush of shame flamed over her skin, a sigh of intense mortification dragged from her as she looked at the evidence in horror.
He had woken her up, he had deliberately woken her up out of a sound sleep and ensured that she didn’t have a chance to consider what she was doing! She washed herself from head to toe in the shower but she couldn’t wash away the intimate ache that reminded her of his lovemaking.
Why did she blame him? she asked herself abruptly. Why did she keep on kidding herself that he was the only one responsible for what happened every time he touched her? The truth was that when Nik touched her she melted, she burned, she craved with a wanton lack of control that was so obvious to her, it could scarcely be a revelation to him. Without the smallest effort, he had taught her to want him before she’d even known what wanting was.
Five years ago that instinctive desire had made her uneasy, embarrassed and stilted in his presence. She hadn’t been ready for that intensity and when Nik had left her to sleep alone it had been a relief to close out those disturbing sensations which had once afflicted her whenever he was close. But when he had chosen to smash down that wall she had put up in self-defence he had unleashed a flood of passion as powerful as a tidal wave.
For she had never stopped wanting him any more than she had denied herself the ludicrous responsibility of buying his socks. The one personal thing she had ever done for him and she had clung to it right to the bitter end. God, it was so pitiful; little wonder he had laughed. Nik probably had more socks than Imelda Marcos had had shoes. Tears stood out in her anguished eyes as she saw inside herself.
Some rejected women clung, she had bought socks with the compulsion of a fetishist, fixed stupid flower arrangements in his wing of the house to remind him of her existence, turned herself slowly but surely from an unsophisticated teenager into one of the most elegant women in London. There wasn’t a bit of her she hadn’t made over for his benefit. It was pathetic to love a man so blindly—utterly, unforgivably pathetic.
For she did love him. She had fought that love with Paul and denied its existence, unconsciously fighting for the freedom that her pride demanded. And nothing had changed. Nik didn’t love her, never would love her. He was just stuck with her. On his side the sex was merely...merely functional. He woke up in bed with a female body and what happened next was one of the very few things that was entirely predictable about Nik. So she needn’t start telling herself that her husband had suddenly begun to find her an unbearable temptation. Nik was a very virile male and he wasn’t given to soul-searching over something as basic as his sexual needs.
But he wouldn’t let her go unless that certificate turned up and for the very first time Leah was consumed by a need to know more. Was it a marriage certificate, a birth certificate, a share certificate...? Dully she enumerated several more possibilities. The first two were unlikely, she decided. Nik had said he was protecting his family. He had never mentioned himself, so had someone committed some sort of crime in his family? Embezzlement, financial skulduggery?
Sheathed in a cunningly cut blue dress, she walked out on to the wide terrace that overlooked the sea and the cliffs far below. In any other mood, she would have wanted to take in the spectacular view and explore the rest of the house but her sole driving compulsion was to find Nik. He was standing on the terrace, dark and lean and lithe in tailored cream chinos and an open-necked black shirt. As he heard her steps, his dark head turned.
She hesitated under the full onslaught of his night-dark eyes, indeed was so wildly disorientated that she very nearly cannoned into a lounger near by. Colour flooded her cheeks, an aching, terrifying awareness quivering through her slender form. She couldn’t take her eyes off his starkly handsome golden features and was plunged into instant recall of how she had felt in his arms hours earlier.
He dealt her a dazzling smile and strode fluidly towards her. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Fine...’
‘Just fine... You look spectacular,’ he murmured with a slightly ragged edge to his deep, dark voice. His eyes ran over her in a blatantly possessive scrutiny, taking in the fall of silvery hair, the delicate perfection of her glowing face, and roamed right on down to her toes, taking unashamed note of every curve he found en route. ‘Glorious,’ he added, reaching for both her hands and drawing her close.
Her heart pounded and she tried to steady it, bewilderment in her sapphire eyes. ‘Nik—’
‘And mine,’ he completed with intense satisfaction.
Everything she had intended to say went straight back out of her head again.
‘Am I interrupting something?’ Ponia asked chirpily, causing both their heads to spin round.
‘Not at all.’ Nik smiled, releasing Leah’s hands just as she attempted to snatch them away.
‘The staff are hovering with lunch,’ Ponia explained, watching Nik swing out a chair by the table and settle Leah into it.
Leah was conscious that her hands were shaking. The full effect of Nik’s warmth and admiration had shaken her. But it couldn’t mean anything. Maybe he was always charm personified with a new lover. For that was really all she was. New, fresh, different in every way from the women he usually took to his bed. And the charm wouldn’t last. Women bored Nik easily, quickly. She had always known that.
Lunch was served. Ponia chattered about inconsequential things. Every time Leah looked up from her plate she was entrapped by Nik’s slumbrous gaze and her pulse would quicken and her temperature would rise, making her reach for her wine with increasing regularity.
Nik’s mobile phone buzzed. He left the table to pick it up where it lay on a chair several yards away.
‘I can’t wait until the rest of the family see this,’ Ponia chuckled.
‘Sorry, I...?’ Leah dragged her attention from Nik’s vibrant smile in her direction as he talked into the phone. It was no mean feat.
‘You’re locked into each other like a pair of magnets on a honeymoon. When I invited myself along I had no idea what I was getting into!’ Ponia grinned to show that she wasn’t offended. ‘I’m going swimming. I’ll see you later.’
Hot-cheeked, Leah bent her head. She grabbed up her wine again. It gave her something to do with her hands. She had come out here to talk seriously to Nik, a challenge at the best of times but a positively mountainous challenge when, for the very first time in five years, he was treating her like a highly desirable woman and being shatteringly attentive.
Draining her glass, she stood. Nik curved his arms round her from behind, taking her by surprise. As he tugged her relentlessly back into contact with the abrasively masculine angles of his powerful form her treacherous body quivered with an instantaneous response which terrified her and she tensed.
‘What’s wron
g?’ he breathed from above her head.
‘There’s something we need to discuss—’
‘Forget it. If the discussion is likely to harbour a single mention of divorce, separation, celibacy or Woods, let me give you a hint,’ he said with sudden harshness. ‘Keep your mouth closed.’
An entirely unexpected spurt of amusement assailed her. He always thought he was one step ahead of her and for once he wasn’t. ‘It’s not about any of those things.’
Nik tugged her round. ‘Then it’s not important.’
Before she had even guessed his intention he was covering her mouth hungrily with his own. It was headier than the wine she tasted on his lips, sweeter than anything she had ever known. Helplessly she leant into him, snaking her arms round his neck to stay upright, the flames of her response burning up every skin cell. His fingers splayed beneath the curve of her hips, lifting her into electrifying contact with the unmistakable thrust of his erection.
‘I want you again,’ he muttered thickly.
And she wanted him so badly there was an ache low in the pit of her stomach, her mind suddenly a shameful receptacle for erotic images that were shatteringly new to her experience. But the very strength of the passion he could evoke within her devastated her. He didn’t even have to use pretty words or compliments. He didn’t even have to make an effort. A few kisses and she simply fired into spontaneous combustion. Like a sex toy, a submissive little doll that he could manipulate wholly to the dictates of his own needs. That image gave her the strength to pull back from him.
‘I have to talk to you,’ she framed, and turned towards the house. ‘And I think we should go inside.’
‘We can talk in bed.’ Nik tracked her with predatory black eyes.
‘You only got out of bed a few hours ago!’ Leah heard herself hiss.
‘And I can’t wait to get back there, agape mou.’
How did you switch him off again? she wondered wildly, dismally conscious of the tautness of her nipples and the tingling heat deep in the very heart of her. It occurred to her that if she was programmed for his benefit he was very much programmed on the same wavelength and that if she relaxed her guard for one tiny second he was intent on taking advantage of that.
‘I think you’re over-sexed,’ she whispered, sharply disconcerted by what was happening between them.
‘And you’re complaining?’ He dealt her a smouldering smile.
Leah attained the cool of what appeared to be the main reception-room, perspiration beading her short upper lip. She sank down on a sofa.
‘Theos, that’s so cute! Your feet don’t touch the floor!’ Nik laughed and, instead of picking another seat as she had hoped, crouched down in front of her. ‘So talk,’ he invited, studying her with heavy-lidded eyes.
Feeling cornered, Leah edged further back into the depths of the sofa. ‘I’ve been thinking—’
‘Dangerous...definitely a habit you have to break,’ Nik interrupted mockingly.
She had to steel herself to continue. ‘About that certificate.’
He uttered a very rude word she had never heard pass his lips before. Hard tension locked his strong features into immobility and he sprang upright and strode across to the stone fireplace. ‘You do pick your moments,’ he said grimly. ‘What can we possibly have to talk about on that subject?’
‘It has to be found...and I thought that maybe if you gave me some idea about what that certificate contains—’
‘No!’ He shot her a forbidding look and she suffered a weak moment of piercing regret for the speed with which his mood had altered.
‘I wouldn’t tell anybody, for goodness’ sake!’
Nik regarded her with pure steel in his hard gaze. ‘The fewer people who know, the safer my family is.’
She noticed something that a mere day earlier would have left her untouched. She noticed that she did not figure as a part of his precious family. ‘You don’t trust me.’
‘Trust doesn’t come into it.’
‘And the last person you’re likely to trust is Max Harrington’s daughter,’ she completed painfully.
‘I didn’t say that—’
‘You didn’t need to. You treated me like a leper for long enough!’ she added helplessly.
‘The past is behind us—’
‘How can you say that when you’re expecting me to live with it?’ she demanded unevenly, her sapphire gaze bright with pain. ‘I thought that maybe if I knew more I might be able to help you find that certificate...’
‘Ah...suddenly I understand.’ He slung her a glittering look of slashing derision, his hard jawline clenching fiercely. ‘You see it as your passport to freedom. Come up with the certificate and I set you free? Is that it?’
Her narrow shoulders rigid with strain, Leah forced herself to meet that savage scrutiny but she could feel the blood draining from her tense face. ‘Isn’t that what you want too?’
‘I wanted it so badly I could taste it five years ago!’ he delivered with cruel candour. ‘And a week ago I thought I had that certificate. But something changed for me when I emerged empty-handed from that filthy box. I knew I had reached the end of the road and I refuse to waste another single day brooding over a fruitless search. It’s over now!’
‘No, it isn’t,’ she dared unsteadily, tears springing to her distressed eyes but willed back with every ounce of her self-discipline. ‘Not while we are still together.’
‘You weren’t thinking of that when I was inside you,’ he breathed with raw contempt. ‘Or when you were sobbing with satisfaction in my arms.’
‘Please,’ she gasped, defenceless against the charge, shaken by his explicit reminder of her complete lack of restraint.
Closing the distance between them in two long, punishing strides, Nik clamped his hands over her shoulders and dragged her upright. ‘In my bed you’re as hot as hell for what I can give you. You love everything I do to you, you love everything I make you feel. With me you’re wanton, abandoned and out of control...’
Leah shivered violently, stunned by the attack she had somehow drawn down upon herself. ‘How can you speak to me like this?’
‘You can be a whore in my bedroom any time and I don’t give a damn about how you conduct yourself in the kitchen or the drawing-room!’ he misquoted with seething emphasis, his lean fingers biting into her narrow bones, dark eyes flailing her shattered face. ‘But get rid of your adolescent fantasies of true love in a cottage with Woods. It’s never going to happen unless I’m six feet under! You’re my wife. Face it and face it fast before I lose all patience with you!’
The door slammed thunderously in his wake. Leah dared to breathe again but her heart was pounding against her ribcage in near panic. Nik had exploded into rage like a bonfire rained on by paraffin. Dimly it occurred to her that she might have been wiser to tell him that Paul no longer featured in what he had called her ‘adolescent fantasies’. But that idea was wholly crushed as she relived the humiliation of the verbal attack she had just been forced to withstand.
‘Hot as hell...wanton...abandoned...a whore’. No doubt it was exactly what she deserved. She had reduced herself to his primitive level, allowed herself to forget every principle and every decent inhibition, number one of which should have been no sex without love. Well, he could just go back to his bimbos, then; it was absolutely no skin off her... Yes, it was, it was! Deeply hurt, positively savaged by the very idea of Nik with another woman, Leah vented a stifled sob and fled.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘IS NIK WORKING?’ Ponia enquired gently over dinner for two.
‘Probably.’ Leah contrived a stiff little smile meant to suggest that she had only just noticed his absence and was quite unconcerned by it. After all, she reminded herself doggedly, five years of almost continuous absence ought to have accustomed her to the value of her own company and counsel. Only somehow it hadn’t. Their relationship had changed so fast and so radically that Leah was in turmoil and her desperate attempts to regain he
r former detachment weren’t working one little bit.
‘He was in the taverna this afternoon; one of the fishermen at the harbour mentioned it,’ Ponia supplied, and looked uncomfortably at Leah. ‘He’s in a rage, isn’t he?’
‘We had an argument, yes,’ Leah conceded, wishing that the teenager would drop the subject.
‘He has a very hot temper.’ Ponia pushed her thick curls back from one small ear, a reflective curve to her mouth. ‘But he very rarely loses it—which is just as well, considering that the family just don’t know how to handle it. My grandmother never raises her voice. None of them do. They go white to the gills and back off when Nik blows up. The one and only time I saw it, it fascinated me.’
Nik’s niece was watching her almost expectantly. Leah’s brow furrowed but she said nothing.
Ponia concentrated on her plate but kept on talking. ‘I was about eleven when I overheard my two aunts talking about Nik. They were wondering who his natural parents were and I didn’t even know what that meant then—’
Leah froze. ‘His natural parents?’ she repeated, carefully keeping her voice level.
The teenager’s face was uncharacteristically serious. ‘Of course, I was stupid enough to go and ask my mother and she was really upset. It was years before I understood that adoption’s only something to be ashamed of in my family.’
‘Yes,’ Leah agreed, since some input appeared to be expected from her. She was so afraid of revealing her astonishment that she wouldn’t even let herself think about what she had just learnt.
Ponia visibly relaxed. ‘It’s never, ever mentioned. Everybody outside the family thinks Nik was born to my grandmother; how did she get away with it? She was forty-eight!’